Mexican National Sentenced in U.S. Court for Bribery Schemes in Ecuador and Mexico
Javier Aguilar, a 52-year-old Mexican national residing in Houston, Texas, and a former oil trader, has been sentenced to four years in prison in Brooklyn, New York. He was also ordered to pay $7.13 million in forfeiture and a $100,000 fine. Aguilar was found guilty of his involvement in two separate schemes to bribe foreign officials in Ecuador and Mexico. Specifically, he paid over $1 million in bribes to officials of Ecuador’s state-owned oil company Petroecuador and approximately $600,000 to officials at PEMEX Procurement International (PPI), a subsidiary of Mexico’s state-owned oil company PEMEX. These bribes were intended to secure and retain business for his then-employer, Vitol Inc., the U.S. affiliate of a major energy trading company. The schemes involved using fake contracts, sham invoices, shell entities in various offshore locations, and alias email accounts to conceal the illicit activities.
